Randy Herz & Kathy Mendes to present Adventures in Bali and the Komodo Islands at NCUPS on April 13, 2012

Please join us on Friday, April 13, 2012 as we welcome back Kathy Mendes and Randy Herz.Doors open: 7:00PMFeatured Presentation starts: 8:00PM

Meeting is held at: 450 Chadbourne Avenue, Millbrae, California in the Gymnasium at the New Vision United Methodist Church

For directions or more information about NCUPS visit our website at www.ncups.org

Pre-meeting Seminar (7:15PM-8PM): Chuck Tribolet will share how to prepare your images for MiniComp and other contests

FEATURED PRESENTATION: Adventures in Bali and the Komodo Islands by Randy Herz and Kathy Mendes

In May of 2011 Kathy and Randy spent three weeks diving and exploring Bali and the islands of Komodo National Marine Park aboard the Indo Siren. Randy and Kathy will be sharing stories and images from this South Pacific paradise. You will hear about playing with dragons, and how we learned to keep our “evil” parts separated from our “good” parts. In addition to underwater images you will see temples and palaces, monkeys and dragons, even a few birds. Come share our adventure!

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:Randy HerzRandy was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and developed an early interest in photography that really caught on later in life. After learning to SCUBA dive he rented an underwater camera while on a dive trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands. When he came back and showed off his work for his dive club he started getting offers to show at other clubs, and even got some interest in buying some prints. He was hooked! This led to the purchase of a Nikonos V, the first of many underwater camera systems.

During his years of traveling around the world, in addition to underwater photography he became adept at landscape, wildlife and bird photography. Dive travel has taken him to many exotic destinations where he photographed both above and below the water.

Randy has won many awards for his photography including 2004 Best of Show at the California Beach Dive Photo Competition in Monterey California. He is a respected member of the Northern California Underwater Photographic Society, Monterey Peninsula Underwater Photographers, California Ships to Reefs, and was a founding member of Wildlife Photographers of Silicon Valley.

Randy served for six years on the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council from 2005 to 2011.

Kathy MendesA native of Northern California, Kathy grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the San Mateo coast-side. She is a SCUBA diver and underwater photographer and enjoys spending time with family, reading, walking and working in her vegetable garden.Kathy loves to travel to do underwater photography. She began to travel to exotic and local dive destinations to photograph the underwater world and these travels inspired her to take up topside photography with favorites being wildlife and nature photography. Her companion on photo trips and in life is Randy Herz, an accomplished photographer himself.

After working in the high-tech world as a software support technician and software testing engineer Kathy decided to go back to school and create a new career in medical transcription and now is Transcription Supervisor for a pathology lab in a small hospital. She continues her interest in computers and the internet though; spending much of her spare time on the computer, and created a website featuring her images and a blog about her travels and photography.

Kathy plans to continue to travel to destinations all over the world to SCUBA dive and take photographs. These adventures will be chronicled on her website www.divermaiden.com; travel the world with Kathy.

Break (9:15PM – 9:30PM)

Minicomp (9:30PM – 9:45PM):Humor; Images that make you laugh, smile, or smirk.